


Gestures

by Unforgotten



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9518942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten
Summary: Tracy doesn't find out Ted was supposed to move to Chicago until they've been together for a year. It should probably freak her out, right?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measured](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/gifts).



Right from the start, Tracy knows that Ted goes big. It's obvious in all of his stories, the ones he's always telling, the ones she somehow never gets sick of no matter how many times she hears them. It's clear in every discussion they have about the future, no matter how he tries to hold himself back so he doesn't scare her off. (Which is really funny in and of itself, because Ted's not really very good at keeping things like "when we have kids, we should" or "you know what we should do for our golden anniversary?" from coming out of his mouth.)

They've been dating just over a year when she learns about the biggest gesture of all. Lily's the one who spills the beans, and after having met her once before and hearing Ted's stories for a year, somehow Tracy's not surprised by the telling, though she never suspected the contents thereof: "We knew it was serious when Ted canceled his move to Chicago and took the house off the market...Oh, God, you didn't know that, did you? Just pretend I didn't say anything, okay?"

Later that night, when they're back home, in the house Ted introduced her to two weeks after they met, the one she fell in love with almost as quickly as she'd fallen for him, Tracy says, "You were supposed to move to Chicago?"

Ted freezes, not so much a deer in the headlights as worried it's the other way around. "Uh," he says, and, "I'm going to _kill_ Lily."

"There's a pretty good story there, huh?" Tracy says. She kisses Ted quickly, takes him by the hands, pulls him toward the living room, where there's a nice comfortable sofa, perfect for storytelling.

Once they get there, Ted steers into the skid, and the story is...

It's a lot. Tracy knew that Ted and Robin used to date, but she didn't know how long it has dragged on for Ted, didn't know until now that he nearly moved all the across the country because of it. She didn't know until just now that he wasn't supposed to move to Chicago a few weeks or a month after Barney and Robin's wedding; he was supposed to move the next _day_.

"Then met you, and everything changed," Ted says, at the end of the story. "I _had_ to stay. I had to see where this went. I could never have lived with myself if I hadn't."

Tracy thinks about it. If she'd known this, early on, it would have freaked her out. It probably still should: they've only been dating for a year, after all. They aren't even living together yet, even if she does sleep over a minimum of five nights a week, even if Ted surprised her for her birthday by converting one of the bedrooms into an office so it's easier for her to work on her thesis when she's here.

It should probably freak her out, but it doesn't. "You know you're crazy, right?"

"Crazy for _you_ ," Ted says, which is the kind of thing that makes her mock him mercilessly sometimes, but makes her heart swell until she can hardly breathe other times, and this is one of the other times.

"I'm glad you stayed," she says.

"I'm glad it's you," he says. It's the same thing he'll say when they have Penny, then Luke; it's the same thing he'll say at their wedding; it's the same thing he'll say at the hospital, every day, during every round of chemo; it's the same thing he'll say to her every day for the rest of both their lives, up to that golden anniversary and beyond. Of all Ted's gestures, Tracy knows even now that this is the biggest and most important of them all.


End file.
